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Oh, God. Bree. Oh, Jesus, help me. Will I ever see her again?
He realized that he’d fallen silent and was staring at Janet Fraser with his mouth open. Apparently she was used to this sort of response from men, though; she gave him a demure, slant-eyed smile, said that supper would be on the table in a few moments and maybe Da should show Mr. MacKenzie the way to the necessary? Then she was walking back down the hallway, the big door swung to behind her, and he found he could breathe again.

THE SUPPER WAS plain but plentiful and well cooked, and Roger found that food restored him amazingly. No wonder—he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten.
They ate in the kitchen, with a pair of housemaids called A
Here he was at something of a loss, as he had no firm notion what year it was (Brian died—God, will die—when Jamie was nineteen, and if Jamie was born in May of 1721—or was it 1722?—and he was two years younger than Je
Then at last he had a bit of luck, when McTaggart told about taking off his shoe to shake out a stone, then seeing one of the pigs wriggle under the fence and head for the kailyard at a trot. He rushed after the pig, of course, and succeeded in catching it—but had dragged it back to the pen only to find that the other pig had likewise wriggled out and was peacefully eating his shoe.
“This was all she left!” he said, pulling half a shredded leather sole out of his pocket and waving it at them reproachfully. “And a rare struggle I had to pull it from her jaws!”
“Why did ye bother?” Je
“And I suppose I’m to go barefoot ’til then, am I?” McTaggart asked, disgruntled. “There’s frost on the ground in the morn, aye? I could take a chill and be dead of the pleurisy before yon pig’s eaten its last bucket o’ slops, let alone been ta
Brian laughed and lifted his chin toward Je
Paris. Roger’s mind worked furiously, calculating. Jamie had spent not quite two years in Paris at the université and had come back … when? When he was eighteen, he thought. Jamie would have been—will be—eighteen in May of 1739. So it was now 1737, 1738, or 1739.
The narrowing of uncertainty calmed him a little, and he managed to put his mind to thinking of historical events that had occurred in that gap that he might offer as current news in conversation: absurdly, the first thing that came to mind was that the bottle opener had been invented in 1738. The second was that there had been an enormous earthquake in Bombay in 1737.
His audience was initially more interested by the bottle opener, which he was obliged to describe in detail—inventing wildly, as he had no notion what the thing actually looked like, though there were sympathetic murmurs regarding the residents of Bombay and a brief prayer for the souls of those crushed under falling houses and the like.
“But where is Bombay?” asked the younger of the housemaids, wrinkling her brow and looking from one face to another.
“India,” said Je
She vanished through the swinging door, and the bustle of removing dishes left Roger with a few moments’ breathing space. He was begi
Seventeen thirty-something … Jesus, Buck himself hadn’t even been born yet! But, after all, what difference did that make? he asked himself. He hadn’t been born yet, either, and had lived quite happily in a time prior to his birth before… . Could their proximity to the begi
He did know—or thought he knew—that you couldn’t go back to a time during your own lifetime. Trying to exist physically at the same time as yourself just wasn’t on. It had just about killed him once; maybe they’d got too close to Buck’s original lifeline, and Buck had somehow recoiled, taking Roger with him?
Before he could explore the implications of that unsettling thought, Je
“My brother sent it to me from Paris,” Je
“Really?” Roger smiled, being sure to look impressed. He was, the more so at realization of the effort and expense involved in going from this remote mountain wilderness to Paris. “How long has he been there?”
“Oh, almost two years now,” Brian answered. He put out a hand and touched the page gently. “We do miss the lad cruelly, but he writes often. And he sends us books.”
“He’ll be back soon,” Je
Brian smiled, though this too was a little forced.
“Aye. I’m sure I hope so, a nighean. But ye ken he may have found opportunities that keep him abroad for a time.”
“Opportunities? Ye mean that de Marillac woman?” Je
“He could do worse for a wife, lass.” Brian lifted one shoulder. “She’s from a good family.”
Je
“Your brother’s no a complete fool,” he assured her. “I doubt he’d marry a simpleton or a—a—” He’d obviously thought better of saying “whore”—his lips had begun to shape the word—but couldn’t think of a substitute in time.
“He would,” Je
“Janet!” Her father tried to look shocked but failed utterly. McTaggart guffawed openly, and A
“So, then, Mr. MacKenzie. Is your own wife living, I hope? And is she your wean’s mother?”
“Is she—” He felt the question like a blow in the chest but then remembered when he was. The odds of a woman surviving childbirth were no more than even in many places. “Yes. Yes, she’s—in Inverness, with our daughter.”
Mandy. Oh, my sweet baby. Mandy. Bree. Jem. All at once, the enormity of it struck him. He’d managed so far to ignore it by concentrating on the need to find Jem, but now a cold wind whistled through the holes in his heart left by hurtling odds. The odds were that he would never see any of them again. And they would never know what had happened to him.